Windows 8 build released for public.

Posted on September 13, 2011 1:30 PM by Rob Williams

Thanks to the Windows 8 development blog Microsoft launched last month, we've been talking quite a bit about what the upcoming OS is set to feature. So far, the excitement level seems to be high, evidenced by comments made in our forums and other comment sections around the Web. Could Windows 8 outshine the success of Windows 7? Chances are good at this point.



The worst part about being excited about something is having to wait for it. No one likes to wait, and it seems Microsoft has realized that. At its ongoing BUILD conference, where the company is showing off its future OS, it was announced that a public build will be made available tonight to anyone who's interested in taking it for a spin. Both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors will be made available, with and without development/debugging tools built in.

There's been no mention of the exact launch time, but once available, you'll be able to download the build here. If previous Windows betas are like this one, you will need to login or sign-up in order to receive a serial code, which will activate the OS once installed.

Unlike leaked builds, which have a lot of features missing, this build should offer the latest discussed features, including Metro (something a lot of leaked builds have lacked due to Microsoft's tight protection schemes).

So, who's downloading it?

Thanks to Kayden for the heads-up on this!

downloading! gonna fire it up in a VM and play around

I might give this a try, got a spare HDD I could install it on anyways.

Remember it is not SUPPORTED by Windows as of yet, it's a way for people to see what they're doing and give them feed back and such, so don't be surprised if it goes Kaputzky, also remember that they have two UI choices that main one that's good for Tablets and a "Pro" one that's their traditional windows interface.

Me too i'm gonna try it

downloading! gonna fire it up in a VM and play around

+ 1 me too.

Installed and tried it this morning. I'm really not liking it. I believe M$ is trying to turn our desktop into a phone.

Installed and tried it this morning. I'm really not liking it. I believe M$ is trying to turn our desktop into a phone.

Use the regular interface. The Metro interface is aimed towards tablets.

No they are not trying to do anything like that.

I believe M$ is trying to turn our desktop into a phone.

Installed and tried it this morning. I'm really not liking it. I believe M$ is trying to turn our desktop into a phone.

Use the regular interface. The Metro interface is aimed towards tablets.

Yep, you're right. And microsoft is also developing this for the ARM architecture so that its very power efficient and lots of tablets can run this.

Hopefully they will sell a version that just comes without that Metro crap. If it's aimed for tablets, it should be a tablet OS specific feature.

Hopefully they will sell a version that just comes without that Metro crap. If it's aimed for tablets, it should be a tablet OS specific feature.

You can disable it.

Hopefully they will sell a version that just comes without that Metro crap. If it's aimed for tablets, it should be a tablet OS specific feature.

You can disable it.

yar its just a shell, its regular old windows 7 style desktop underneath it all.

I'm installing it now on virtualbox to test it out

its lookin kinda cool, I might try to throw it on a spare hard drive if I can find one